


Turning Point

by cassandraoftroy



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers for S03E14 "Prey", mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandraoftroy/pseuds/cassandraoftroy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Milton struggles with his increasing awareness of the Governor's cruel and erratic behavior, but finds it difficult to reconcile himself to a course of action -- until he discovers the Governor's newest secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Milton

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warning for Season 3 Episode 14, "Prey."

"Unsettled" was perhaps an understated way to describe his mental state; Milton hated lying, both because the implicit social contract of people living in a civilized society made honesty a moral mandate, and because he was never any good at it. Lying, outright or by omission, required a certain level of interpersonal expertise that usually eluded him. It had been a mistake to mention the fire that had destroyed the captured biters to Philip; he should have pretended ignorance until the other man brought it up himself. He couldn't predict how Philip – no, how _the Governor_ – would react to that knowledge, and it frightened him.

Milton sat down at the small desk in his office and opened the drawer where he kept his notebooks. He removed them carefully, keeping them in chronological order, and set them on the desk in front of him. Reaching into the apparently-empty drawer, he removed the false bottom that concealed one more notebook, which as yet had only a few of its pages covered in text. It was important to keep a record, to remember, but some things were not intended for public consumption. This record had become more of a personal journal; he'd started keeping it after the attack by the prison group, when things at Woodbury had... changed.

He opened to the page where he had last left off. The text would be incomprehensible to anyone else; he'd used a cipher that he had developed in his spare time in college: a hodgepodge of Greek and Cyrillic characters mixed with astronomy, calculus, and electrical engineering symbols. It had been a sort of in-joke among the lab group he'd worked with, a way of leaving messages in public that would confuse anyone else who saw them. It even had characters to represent spaces and punctuation marks, so that would-be code-breakers couldn't use the usual tricks to crack it. To anyone who didn't know the cipher, his notebook was filled with nothing more than string after string of nonsense.

After the last couple of weeks of practice, Milton was fluent enough in the code to write nearly as quickly as he wrote in standard English. _I recognize less and less of him now. I fear this world, and recent events, have irreparably twisted the man I knew. He is understandably distraught over the death of his daughter, but when he asked me about the spark of identity remaining in the biters, I couldn't help but wonder, why then did he decide that we never allow our own to turn? Is it cold pragmatism, or mercy? Are we murdering our friends and neighbors, or sparing them a fate worse than death – and if the latter, why did he keep poor Penny in her tortured state?_

He shook his head, frustrated with himself. _I'm getting away from what's really bothering me. Trying to avoid thinking about it, I suppose. This whole business with the prison group is wrong. It would be one thing if they were simply marauders, but after the meeting yesterday, we know they're simply trying to survive, and would be content to leave us alone if we let them. I'm not sure whether it's Philip's need for revenge against Michonne, or whether the attack on Woodbury has made him feel threatened, but there is little of rationality or humanity in his decision to slaughter them all. There is little of_ Philip _in that decision; I would like to think that the man I knew didn't have this sort of ruthless brutality in him. I don't know what to do._

For several long moments he stared at the page, but the thin blue college-ruled lines simply waited expectantly, as if they knew what he would say next. He fidgeted with his pen, reluctant to commit himself to the words – as if the ink on the page would make them real, rather than phantoms of thought that could be brushed away with a little distraction. Milton sighed. _I'm afraid of him,_ he admitted to the journal, to himself. _The Governor. I can't predict him anymore; I never would have anticipated the way he accosted me physically when he realized I'd told Andrea his plans for the prison group. I'm afraid of what he might do, now that he knows I set that fire. I'm afraid of what he'll do to Andrea, if he finds her tomorrow. I'm afraid of what he plans to do to her friends at the prison, and to Michonne. And I'm afraid that he's really been like this all along, and I just didn't let myself see it. What else has he done, that I just looked the other way and didn't notice? What's he going to do next? How do I stop it?_ Can _I stop it? What will it cost me to go against him?_

He nearly put down the pen in disgust when he realized what he was thinking. _I feel helpless to oppose him, but I suspect that what I'm even more afraid of is_ not _being helpless – that there is something in my power to do to end this, because that would mean I was ethically obligated to do it._ This time he did put down the pen. His shoulders slumped; writing those short paragraphs had been as draining as one of the twenty-hour days he used to spend working in front of a computer screen, with only short interruptions for the bathroom, the microwave, or the coffee machine. But despite his exhaustion, he felt restless; putting his thoughts into words had done little to ease the unsettled feeling that plagued him. Carefully he packed away his journal into the secret compartment, then settled the false bottom over it and replaced his other notebooks in the drawer. He rose and left his office, heading for the back door that opened onto the alley where he hoped to pass unobserved.

Almost without conscious decision, Milton found himself moving toward the isolated building that he had shown Andrea earlier that day. The memory of that place was like a cut on the inside of his mouth: the more he prodded it, the more uncomfortable it became, but he couldn't make himself leave it alone. He had to step quietly as he traversed the second-floor catwalk with the vent that overlooked the... room. He still wasn't sure what he expected to see there that he hadn't on previous occasions – some macabre detail that would underscore his former friend's deteriorating psychological condition, or a chilling reminder of the horrors to come that would steel his will to act–

Andrea was strapped into the chair. Her body was rigidly still, as though she feared that the slightest sound from her would summon the monster that had bound her there. For a moment, Milton was frozen with her, as deprived of the power of movement and action as she was. His mind completely rebelled at the scene before him, refusing to accept or comprehend what he was seeing.

She was still wearing the same clothes Milton had last seen her in a few hours ago. The jacket and boots seemed bizarrely out of place on a woman strapped into a dentist's chair, but their presence meant that he hadn't done anything to her yet, at least. There were no visible restraints on her limbs; the gag he could see over her mouth must have also been holding her in place against the headrest of the chair. That meant she couldn't move her head – she couldn't see him. He had been silent when he came in; she would have no way of knowing he was ever there.

 _You can't keep looking the other way._ Shame burned in his cheeks at his own cowardice. Andrea had been right; he'd been ignoring signs and letting himself believe that everything was fine for far too long. He headed for the stairs.

The Governor wouldn't be here; he wouldn't have left Andrea alone if he planned to stay. If he was saving her – Milton shuddered at the idea – for after the prison group was dealt with, he would be off making other preparations. There were plenty of loose ends that needed the Governor's attention: making ready for the massacre tomorrow, handling the conflict with the new group, and dealing with Milton himself. He knew the Governor wouldn't let the matter of the fire pass without comment. But the point was, he wouldn't be _here_. Milton doubted there would be guards, either; it seemed to be the Governor's intention to keep Andrea's presence, and perhaps the entire torture chamber, secret even from Martinez.

When his shadow crossed the gap in the door, he heard Andrea's muffled gasp, and the slight scrape of metal against metal. He pushed the door open. Her eyes were wide and staring, but when she registered that it was him, and not the Governor, her body relaxed slightly. He didn't speak until he was right beside her, and then only in a whisper. "I'm getting you out of here. This is wrong." The head restraint prevented her from nodding, but she made a soft sound through her nose in acknowledgment.

She was handcuffed to the arms of the chair; he hadn't been able to see the steel bracelets from his earlier vantage point. No doubt the Governor had the keys. Milton would have to improvise to release her. He glanced at the table behind the chair, where the two of them had watched the Governor almost lovingly array a variety of medical implements, and tried not to think about the uses to which the other man had intended to put them. The bone saw would likely be strong enough to cut the chains holding the handcuffs together. The head restraint would be simpler, so he reached up to unfasten that first. Beneath that band, a strip of duct tape held her gag in place. He tried to peel it off slowly, to minimize the pain of pulling away the adhesive, but as soon as he had a firm grip on the edge of the tape, Andrea yanked her head to one side, tearing the tape free. She spat out the cloth that it had held in place. "Thank you," she whispered. "Hurry. I don't know where he went."

He nodded. "I doubt he'll be back right away, but... I'm not sure I know him as well as I used to." He was already moving. The roll of tape had joined the surgical tools on the table, and he picked it up and pulled off a strip before slipping the roll around his wrist. He wrapped the piece of tape carefully around the chain of the cuff binding her right wrist; the tape would help hold the saw blade in place so that it didn't slip on the smooth surface of the metal.

If the rate of Andrea's breathing, and the pulse he could feel in her wrist whenever he gripped it to better position the saw, were any indication, she was every bit as nervous as he was. All of Milton's attention was on the task at hand, leaving Andrea to act as lookout – though there was little point in that role, as there would be no time to hide Milton's presence or the rescue attempt if anyone approached. But either their luck held, or he was still able to predict the Governor's actions with some accuracy after all, because they were not interrupted in the solid twenty or thirty minutes it took him to saw through both handcuffs. She scrambled clear of the chair as soon as her first wrist was free, which actually made it easier to cut through the second chain, as she could pull it taut to provide more support for the saw blade.

"I mean it, Milton," she said when the grating of metal finally ended, "thank you for coming for me. I don't know what I would have done otherwise."

He shrugged, turning away from her to find a place to set down the saw; it seemed perverse to put it back on the table with the rest of the torture implements. "He told me he hadn't found you. I didn't even know you were here until I got here... I'm not even sure why I came."

She placed a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. "Well, I'm glad you did. Now let's get out of here."

"Right," he agreed. "The gates are all still under guard, but most of the Governor's men are preparing for tomorrow. There should be a gap where you can sneak through."

"Where _we_ can sneak through," she interrupted him.

Milton shook his head. "I told you, Woodbury is my home, for better or worse. I wouldn't know what to do with myself anywhere else." He looked down at her wrists, where the severed chains from the handcuffs still jingled. The noise could give her away when she tried to escape; he pulled another strip of tape to wrap around her wrist and muffle the sound.

She shook off his hand, reaching out to cup the side of his face and forcing him to meet her gaze. "Milton, it's not safe here anymore. Maybe if it had just been you telling me about the Governor's plans before, he would have let it slide, but now? He'll _kill_ you for helping me escape. You can't stay."

"What would I do?" he demanded. "I'm a researcher, an observer, not a – a warrior! And your friends aren't going to trust someone from Woodbury, someone they perceive as the enemy."

"I'll vouch for you," she promised. "When I tell them how you helped me, they'll know they can trust you."

"And then what? What will they ask me to do?" He didn't like how unsteady his voice was. "The Governor is wrong for planning to butcher them, but I'm not going to betray the entire town to these people. There are innocents here, too."

She gave him an earnest smile. "They're not like that. Rick and the others, they just want to be left in peace. Once the Governor is gone, they'll leave Woodbury alone. Maybe it'll even be safe to come back then, if you want to. But right now, it's not." Her expression turned solemn again. "Please, come with me. It'll be okay."

"But my research..." he protested.

"You can't research anything if Philip kills you."

The uncompromising way she said it shocked Milton out of his indecision. She was right; it wasn't "the Governor" that would be upset with Andrea's escape, and take his revenge on Milton – it was _Philip_. He'd been trying to think of them as separate entities, different personas with distinct motivations and goals, but that was just another way he'd been refusing to see what was in front of him. Philip _was_ the Governor, and every atrocity he committed belonged to the man he knew. Philip would kill him if he stayed. Milton nodded. "All right."

Andrea took the cleaver from the display of torture tools, and Milton held onto the roll of duct tape so that they could improvise armor against biters on their journey. "The gun he insisted I take yesterday," Milton suggested. "It's back at my apartment, along with my research notes and records."

She frowned, considering the idea, and her fingers shifted on the handle of the cleaver. Even he could tell that she wanted the gun. "It's too dangerous," she finally said, reluctance clear in her tone. "We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, before somebody spots us or notices we're missing."

He sighed; those notes represented almost a year of research, and he was unlikely to find the resources necessary to replicate most of his experiments at this prison. If they would even allow him to continue his studies. "If you're sure," he temporized.

Her decisive nod put an end to the question. "Let's go."


	2. Andrea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrea and Milton escape Woodbury together, heading for the prison to warn them of the Governor's trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, by now this story has been thoroughly Jossed by the season finale, but that's okay! We'll just go a bit AU from here. Nobody minds AUs, right?

It seemed like she was always sneaking out of Woodbury. There was a kind of irony to that, since she'd been the one who was so ready to stay. It was so hard to remember what she'd seen in the town back then, after all she'd seen since. Sure, she knew in the abstract – Woodbury was safe, and comfortable, and "civilized" in a way that nothing had been since before the world ended. _Well, other than the CDC, and look how that turned out._ But it was a struggle to recall the way she'd felt about Woodbury when she and Michonne had first been taken there; the funhouse-mirror image of the town was too strongly seared into her brain. Woodbury was a sick, rotten place, and she couldn't bring to mind an image of how she'd once thought of it, wholesome and welcoming. The very fabric of the place seemed to agree with that assessment, as the crate she'd dragged over to stand on gave out beneath her boot in a spray of rotting wood splinters.

Milton rolled a steel drum over with some difficulty, and Andrea scrambled on top of it and onto the overturned truck that made up this section of the wall. There was no gate here, so patrols only swept through twice a day to check for damage to the perimeter. She reached down to help Milton fumble his way up beside her, and they looked out over the wall for a moment, checking to see if the area beyond was clear of biters, before descending.

It was the same with Philip – now that the the rotten, twisted core of him had been exposed, it was a struggle to remember how she'd ever found him desirable. The loss of his eye hadn't made him any less handsome, but the vicious, _gleeful_ cruelty he'd shown in that storage building made it impossible for her to see anything but ugliness in him every time she imagined his face. He had _enjoyed_ hunting her down like a rat, terrifying her, savoring the fear in her eyes.

Worse still was the realization that what he'd done wasn't the behavior of a man broken by recent psychological trauma; it was the act of a long-time predator, one who was practiced and comfortable with viewing other people as his prey. This couldn't have started with Michonne taking his eye. _Is that what she sensed in him? That he was... wrong?_ She grabbed Milton's shirt and dragged him into a crouch behind a patch of undergrowth, out of sight of a pair of wandering biters. _Why didn't she tell me?_ She realized the answer to that question the moment it crossed her mind: Michonne would've sounded crazy if she'd tried to convince Andrea that their savior was a psychopath with nothing more than a feeling to go on. But she hadn't been wrong. And the signs must have been there from the start, if Michonne had picked up on them. Why hadn't Andrea seen them?

The two biters had moved on, and Andrea gestured to Milton to follow her as she started to plot a course that would loop back to the road. He caught her arm, shaking his head. "What is it?" she hissed, keeping her voice low.

"There's only one clear road between Woodbury and the prison, and the Governor knows it," he told her in similarly hushed tones. "We can't follow the road."

Of course. That was how he'd found her earlier, after all. _Another thing I should have realized._ She tried to put the thought out of her head for now. "I can find our way across country; Michonne taught me a few things about orienteering."

Milton's gaze flitted about, the way it often did when he was anxious. "That's straight through a Red Zone. We'll need weapons."

Not for the first time, she thought mournfully about the pistol she'd been forced to surrender that morning, and Milton's gun that they hadn't felt safe enough to go back for. The cleaver she'd taken was their only protection, and that made her feel frighteningly exposed. They had so few resources available to them... "I think I know a place."

"What place?" She noticed him keeping a nervous eye on their surroundings while they spoke; that was good, it meant he had some instincts for danger. She wouldn't have to do this alone again.

Andrea took a deep breath, bracing herself against the memory of those dark rooms with their echoing floors, and the bits of plywood and chain-link that had been all that had stood between her and the man with the shovel. "A storage building. There were tools there, and I'm not sure what else. We should be able to find things to use as weapons, and it should be at least mostly clear." If the Governor had survived that crowd of biters, and any others that were drawn by the noise, then he must have killed enough to cut a path out.

"If it's safe there, I can reinforce our clothing with this to protect against biters," he offered, holding up the arm that still bore the roll of duct tape.

She'd seen his duct-tape armor in action, and it worked well enough to suit her. "Good idea," she agreed. "Let's just pray we don't need it." After another quick scan of the horizon, she led the way forward.

Their progress toward the storage building, already slowed by the need to navigate across open country, was further hampered by having to stop and hide from biters. Andrea was much more at ease with killing biters than with hunkering down behind a tree trunk until they wandered away, and eliminating them was faster. But with only one weapon between the two of them, they'd be helpless if biters surrounded them. Still, there were a few hours of daylight remaining by the time they found the building; with a little luck, they could do what they needed to there and still reach the prison before dark. There was no sign of vehicles, other than the tracks left by the Governor's truck earlier that day; if their escape had been discovered, no one had thought to look for them here yet. _Thank goodness for small favors,_ she thought cynically.

The prospect of going back into that building hadn't gotten any more pleasant during their hike, but Andrea went in first, cleaver poised to take out any stragglers that had escaped the Governor. It seemed quiet. Milton shut the door behind them and they progressed slowly forward through the winding rooms and corridors, peering into shadows that might conceal anything human-sized.

Hanging on a pegboard along one wall was an ax, which Andrea appropriated and passed to Milton. "Think you can handle that?"

"I'm not sure I have much choice," he observed, accepting the ax from her with mingled discomfort and determination. She gave him a reassuring smile.

A steel toolbox below the pegboard contained a number of heavy screwdrivers, which Andrea happily traded for the unwieldy cleaver. Milton found a garden trowel that fit well enough into his pocket, for biters that got too close for the ax.

There were only three surviving biters left in the parts of the building they explored, two of them reduced to a dragging crawl by heavy damage. Andrea let Milton dispatch those with the ax while she took out the third, which still had its feet under it. "I think that's all of them. Did you want to armor us up?" She nodded at the tape he still wore around one wrist.

"Yes, of course." He slipped the roll over his hand and peeled off a strip. "It's probably best if you fasten your jacket at least partway, for better coverage." Milton waited while she zipped the leather partly closed, and then took one of her arms and began coating the sleeve in stripes of tape.

After a few moments, her arm started getting tired from holding it extended. "Would this be easier if I took the jacket off?"

He glanced up at her face. "I can do it that way if you'd prefer, but it's actually easier to do this while you're wearing it. I don't have to keep flipping it over to get at the other side, and I can make sure the tape doesn't limit your range of motion. Is this too uncomfortable?"

"No, it's fine." _Compared to what I've been through today, I think I can manage holding my arm out for a few minutes._ It wasn't long before he switched to the other arm, and she watched him work to distract herself from the growing ache in her bicep. He was careful, and thorough, but what surprised her most was his gentleness; he didn't jerk her arm around when he needed her to move this way or that, and he smoothed the tape against the fabric rather than squeezing to fix the adhesive.

Shortly her other arm was done, leaving only the torso of the jacket. Milton hesitated. "Um, please don't interpret this as, uh – I just need to put the tape–"

That actually got a chuckle out of her. "Milton, I'm not going to accuse you of trying to feel me up while you're trying to save my life. Go ahead."

He cleared his throat, fidgeting with the tape. "All right. But let me know if anything, um..." At her wry expression, he shut up and went to work. She put her hands behind her head, resting her intertwined fingers against her neck, to give him room to work unhindered.

For all that she'd intimated that his awkwardness was silly, the work he was doing put them in very close contact; Andrea was acutely aware of the proximity of him, the movement of his hands over her back and sides. Still, his touch remained gentle, and as respectful as it could be under the circumstances.

She wondered why his gentleness had come as such a shock to her. _I guess I thought that, with this world we live in now, you don't get very far by being soft. You need strength to survive out here._ That had been Shane's criticism of Rick, hadn't it? That he was too soft, too gentle, wasn't strong enough to protect them. Shane knew the value of strength. But... The conversation with Carol back at the prison returned to her in a rush. _Shane tried to kill his best friend._ Even more chilling than that revelation had been the way Carol had described why he'd done it, as if it didn't surprise her at all that he'd commit murder over Lori. As if Shane were the sort of man that Carol had far too much experience with in her life: a controlling, amoral abuser, whose motivations could be boiled down to what he thought belonged to him. _Like the Governor,_ Andrea realized with horror.

When had she become the kind of woman who was attracted to abusers and psychopaths? She'd never dated anyone abusive before the world had ended – certainly no one who had ever been violent. She thought back over her last couple of exes; sure, they'd turned out to be _assholes_ , but they hadn't been dangerous. It had to be some sort of sick coincidence that the last two men she'd slept with had been obsessive and homicidal... didn't it?

_It doesn't matter now._ She resolutely turned her thoughts elsewhere. Milton's work with the tape was quick and precise, though when it came to applying the strips to her body, his hands became less certain. A couple of times, she caught him in a moment of indecision, torn between trying to fuss the tape perfectly into place and not wanting to let his touch linger on certain areas of her body. It slowed his work a little, and she briefly let herself enjoy the feeling of human contact with someone who wasn't trying to harm her.

But she knew she should try to relieve the tension between them. "This won't get any less weird by acting like it's not," she told him, grinning warmly. "Just embrace the awkwardness."

Milton attempted a nervous laugh, but it came out a little strangled. "I just... I didn't want you to think that – because of the circumstances, that I was trying to take advantage..."

_Does he think I'm a damsel-in-distress, ready to swoon into his arms because he rescued me?_ She glanced away for a moment, trying to keep the amusement off her face. "Milton, I meant what I said before; I'm truly grateful that you came and let me out of that torture chamber. I'd probably be dead by now, or wishing I was, if you hadn't. But I think right now, it's fair to say that we're saving _each other_. There's no reason for things to be uncomfortable between us; we're in this together. Okay?"

He studied her for a moment, until his expression relaxed and he nodded. "Okay."

Andrea gave him a quick hug, which he returned after only a brief hesitation. Then she stepped back just enough for him to finish taping her up. This time, his hands were more sure against her body, which was not unpleasant, if she were being honest about it. He finished his work quickly, walking around her to assess the coverage of the tape. "That should hold up under all but the most extreme circumstances," he said.

She held out her arms and inspected her armor. It didn't look like much, but she knew the sturdy tape would turn aside human teeth, at least for a short time. "Thanks. Is there enough left on that roll for you?"

Milton glanced down at the tape hanging around his wrist, his expression doubtful. "Possibly, but I'm not sure this shirt is sturdy enough to support it."

"Then we'll have to find something for you to wear over it," Andrea decided. "Let's take a quick look around. Just be careful; there are still a lot of dark corners in this place."

It wasn't long before Milton discovered a bulky canvas jacket, only slightly oversized on him. Under his guidance, Andrea applied strips of tape to his arms, flanks, and back. Despite his precise instructions, she was much less confident in her own handiwork than she was in the protection he'd made for her, and she offered a silent prayer to whomever might be listening that his armor wouldn't be put to the test.

When she finished, Andrea glanced at the nearest exterior window. The light was still strong, but the angle of the shadows was increasing. "If that's everything, we should hurry. We don't want to move overland in the dark."

"The dark," Milton repeated. "I know light attracts biters, but we can't move around inside the prison completely blind. We should look for lanterns, or something." Finding the lanterns, and a handful of road flares, added several minutes to their departure time, but Andrea hoped it wouldn't make too much difference. Winter was well behind them now, and the days were getting longer. When they finally left the storage building, Andrea breathed deeply of the fresh afternoon air, facing into the breeze that carried away the stench of death from behind her. _I think we might actually make it._


End file.
